PakledHostage

There are a few climbers around which surprises me a bit. Maybe it is the nature of the KSP community, being unlike a lot of other gaming communities? I have a friend who always looked down her nose at climbers. She wondered why I, with a real job and a university education would hang out with what she saw as "low life's"? What she didn't realize is that climbing is a technical sport that draws a lot of technical people. That scruffy looking guy in Camp 4 at Yosemite is just as likely to be a doctor or engineer as he is to be a climbing bum... I think that may be because a lot of people take it up as a result of being exposed to it through campus outdoor clubs. Maybe that is also why there seem to be a few around here? This game has an appeal for technical people too. Maybe there's (for lack of a better phrase) "cross contamination"?

I was curious "how gray" Churyomov-Gerasimenko was in the photo so I used the histogram function in Gimp to plot histograms for the RGB channels in the image. I also plotted the histogram of Lajos' coal heap photo for comparison. For the benefit of anyone who's not familiar with the details of how it works, computer screens generate colours through a combination of red, green and blue. The data for each image pixel is usually encoded as three 8 bit colour channels and a fourth 8 bit alpha (degree of transparency) channel. Shades of gray result when all three colour channels are equal (e.g. R=87, G=87 and B=87). Black results when all three channels equal 0 and white results when all three channels equal 255. If the image was "perfectly gray", all three colour channels would overlap in the histogram. They don't in either image, although the coal heap has less overlap than the comet. In other words, the portion of the comet image that I analysed is "grayer" than the portion of the coal heap image. Churyumov-Gerasimenko Coal heap

They're better than nothing, although they might have been improved if you'd used Aningaaq's suggestion to place your camera on a bean bag if you don't have a proper tripod... I'm jealous that you got to see it in real life.

There was an interesting TED talk about that topic a few years ago:

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Too much oil money, not enough booze? Take solace in the fact that when the chinook winds are blowing there it is raining on the other side of the rocks.

I did laugh but my Google Fu tells me that the video you posted is wrongly attributed to a children's performance. It seems that the recording was actually done tongue-in-cheek by the Portsmouth Sinfonia. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.

Maybe this belongs in the bad jokes thread, but I'm struck by the idea that the first robotic mission to Io should be called the "Seven Dwarfs Mission"... You know, Io, Io, it's off to work I go? [cricket, cricket, cricket] I'll show myself out.

A rope walks into a bar. The bartender says "We don't serve your kahnd!". The rope asks why and the bartender says "you're a rope". The rope ties himself into a figure 8, musses up his ends a bit and says "I'm a frayed knot!".

Because Episode I, II and parts of III... Not to mention Han shot first.

I am not really sure. I originally wrote the Figaro plugin in response to a challenge on the challenge thread and then decided to make it available to the masses when MrPwner offered to make some parts for it (you have him to thank for the Figaro receiver part and the GNSS transmitter part). I know that this mod is a bit simple and lacks a lot of functionality that might be "nice to have", but it is intended first and foremost as a science mod. It is intended to get people thinking about where their navigation information comes from. Mods like Mechjeb and even the stock game are great but they abstract the very real technological problem of accurately determining position so that you can do all of the things the map view and Mechjeb allow you to do. If you've already launched a constellation that gives you good coverage and accuracy, then you've met the intent of the mod. I have suggested, through one of their former staff members, that Squad incorporate the idea as a contract into the stock game but I was told that they weren't interested. Something about how mods like this one and RemoteTech differ from their vision for the game. That's fine with me. I'll continue to support it myself, but I don't have enough time or motivation to make it into anything more than it already is. The only thing I can suggest, therefore, would be that you ask other modders to integrate their mods with Figaro. I've exposed some variables that other mod makers could read to add the type of functionality that Yaivenov requested in his/her post above, but the authors of those mods have to make the changes on their end.

Once you've launched your GNSS constellation, you can place a Figaro receiver on your craft. You can then enter the lat/Lon of any point on Kerbin (or whatever other celestial body your constellation orbits) and the Figaro receiver will display the heading and distance to that point. Both values are along the great circle (shortest route) between your current location and your destination. Just fly that heading on the navball.

Interesting sidebar to the story of the explosion aboard Apollo 13's Odyssey is that the explosion was witnessed from the ground by some off-duty NASA employees through a 16-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.

What's there to call out? SpaceXray made a significant claim without providing a link. I am sorry if I offended you with my tounge in cheek reference to Wikipedia. Thank you for posting the link. It must be said, though, that something smells fishy about this rating. What is IMDB's criteria? Can it be manipulated? Why has it dropped by one point in as little as a few hours between when SpaceXray and you checked it? Interstellar is the only recent movie in that list. Could it be there only as a result of some campaign to vote it up? I will make it a point to check back in a year or so. If it is still in the top 20 then, I'll have my crow barbecued.

While I can't recommend it, Buzz Aldrin tried this approach:

[Citation Needed] On Rotten Tomatoes, Interstellar gets an aggregate score of 73% among professional critics and 87% among general audience members. Compare that to even Guardians of the Galaxy which achieves 90% among professional critics and 94% among general audience members. I have seen it. It was entertaining. I'd give it a 7/10. I think it is too early to call it a classic. You can't claim that title. You have to earn it through the test of time.

Fair point. I originally had a sentence in there about Fox News, so I suspect we're in agreement.

I don't know... My impression is that they mostly ARE Americans or at least westerners. Many may be mentally ill, others want to exploit the gullible for their own political objectives.

I always get a kick out of the Mitchell and Webb Moon landing conspiracy comedy sketch:

All of them? What about the space shuttle's? The TPS tiles are a heat shield, aren't they?

You mean ablatively. And he's talking about making an aerobraking pass before final re-entry. In between passes there's no ablation because there's no more heating. Only radiative cooling while waiting for the ultimate re-entry.

Thanks for the updates guys. NASA TV keeps crashing on my phone so I am having trouble watching.

And because cooling in space is difficult. There's no air to conductively or convectively cool the heat shield in between passes. There's only radiative heat transfer and that isn't very effective in comparison. The heat shield would bake. This was a factor if you used my old re-entry heat mod (long since retired). I don't know if the current deadly re-entry mods model this effect.

Because real life isn't KSP? Heat shield integrity under repeated cycles and the endurance of the capsule's life support system after separation from the service module (among others) are important factors that limit their options.

I wonder if, while we're at it, we can look up the definition of "pedantic"?